The ever increasing need of civilized man for power is rapidly depleting the worlds reserves of fossil fuels and requiring civilization to turn to other sources of energy. One of these sources is water which has been used as a source of energy for many years. It has been harnessed to drive mills and to provide a driving force for a large variety of mechanical devices during the industrial revolution. With the advent of electrical power it has provided the energy to drive turbines adapted to create electrical power for masses of people and industrial users. However, all of these uses for water to create energy in a more useable form demands that the water supply has a sufficient head of pressure and is of relatively inexhaustable volume because the discharge fluid from the power converters is lost to the system.
Some attempts have been made to recycle water but they provide a reclamation of only a small percentage of the total volume utilized. An example of such devices is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,246 issued to B. J. Hancock on Aug. 13, 1974 for "System for Raising And Using Water." In this system, water flowing from a pressure head is utilized to raise a portion of the water via vacuum means so that it may be recycled through a turbine. As previously suggested, systems similar to this lose most of the fluid and only a small portion is recycled.
One means to lessen the amount of fluid wasted in systems similar to those previously described would be to create a more energy conservative means to recycle the fluid. One means of conserving energy in recycling fluids which has met with some success is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,509 issued to J. E. Gillilan and H. M. Townsend on Mar. 2, 1976 for "Pumping System." In systems such as this, air is compressed in a plurality of storage chambers as a function of water or a similar fluid entering a different chamber. The pressure head of water is thus converted to an air pressure in a plurality of tanks having a much greater volume than the original pressure generating volume. This potential energy in the form of air pressure is then utilized to reduce the pressure across a compressed gas pumping system to reduce the power required for fluid recirculation.
All of the foregoing systems fail to achieve a high efficiency level due to their failure to maximize conservation of materials as well as energy.